More functions in Photoshop Elements

Those of you familiar with the Curves function in the full CS versions of Photoshop will agree its one of the most powerful editing tools.

Elements never had this functionality, its only later versions that received a real cripple version of the real thing. For years there has been a great alternative Plug-In called SmartCurves that help out those of us graving for this functionality.

There has been tweaks available for elements 2 and 3 but many was not really interested going back to those early versions of Elements.

Its until recently that I discovered a website called Elements Plus that I discovered that all versions now has the change to get a more Photoshop like curves function. They still not available as a adjustment layers but at least we getting really close now. The curves function is a action this time and not a plug-in as the SmartCurve.

Here you can see the layers pallet in Photoshop Elements 6 with a background layer, a adjustment layer plus another layer on top of that. The top layers has a mask which is part of the new set of tools.

In this example I used the top layer to use the curves function on and then with the mask I altered the effect of the curves function on the final picture. Once you get use to this you will not be able to work without it again.

You might ask, why using PSE 6? To be honest I have all three versions, 6, 7 and 8 for Mac. They all three good and each can be of real value to the photographer.